Svetharsis stumbled out from his cot. His mechanical gnomish clock beat a shrill klaxon alarm in the early morning darkness, the sound reverberating through the confines of his small bedroom. The room—really just a broom closet attached to his shop, rather than a proper bedroom—had space enough for just the cot and a nightstand. He shut off the alarm and grabbed his golden wire-rim glasses from where they sat next to the alarm on the nightstand. Then he cracked a window to admit some cool, refreshing morning air and walked into the main body of his quill shop.

Svetharsis would graciously describe the shop as more cozy, rather than cramped: it was still undeniably small, but between the feathers strung from the rafters to dry and the way that even a small heat source would fill the space with a comfortable warmth, the shop had a very lived-in, homely ambiance. Which was good, because it was all he could afford. Especially with how business had been the past few years.

He went to the countertop that served triple-duty as workbench, kitchen, and dining room table and turned on two alchemical braziers: one underneath a teapot, the other underneath a small vat of sand. Today was market day, and before Svetharsis departed, he needed to finish clarifying a new batch of swan feathers that he’d left to soak overnight. After a brief minute, the tea was ready. Steam rose from the teacup, slowly curling up and around his tusks as he savored the drink and waited for the sand to reach the appropriate temperature. Once it had, he moved the fine white feathers from the water bath into the vat of heated sand, taking care to scoop up a small amount of sand into each feather’s hollow calamus as he went. It took another minute to clarify each feather, the hot sand helping to harden and strengthen the quill.

He ran an idle hand over the long white feathers as he withdrew each quill from the sand. These would make beautiful writing instruments. Especially once in use, as the dark iron gall ink wicked out from the quill and indelibly stained the parchment purple-black; only then revealing the true splendor of the feather’s snowy contrast. Indeed, these quills were a work of art meant to be admired by the user. Beauty of function, as well as form.

He would carve the nibs later, tailoring each to the exact preferences of his customers: left-handed, right-handed, slant tip, square cut, oblique tip. He could do them all, expertly whittling down the shaft with just a few strokes of his knife. Such was the level of personal service Svetharsis offered. Not that it mattered overmuch. Save for a few scriptoria that proved the backbone of his business, quills were quickly falling out of fashion amongst the cosmopolitan residents of The Greatest City.

Svarthsis looked down at a silver metallic tube lying on his workbench. He’d purchased it himself, shortly after the model was first introduced, and the feelings of guilt and disgust still lingered in the pit of his belly. In fact, this innocuous-seeming metal tube was the agent of his demise: one of the hottest recent inventions from GnoU, the Bearing-tipped Auto-feeding Lightweight Level-writing Perpetual-use Orthopedically-friendly Infinitely-refillable Non-avian Technology writing device. Or B.A.L.L.P.O.I.N.T. for short.

He sighed. The damn thing was so easy to use.

Still, orcs had a well-deserved reputation for their obstinacy, and he was no exception. He wouldn’t be run over by the great juggernaut called progress without putting up a fight. Besides, he was a talented artisan who carried on a centuries-old tradition while deftly combining skilled manufacturing with a subtle, beautiful artistry. What sort of civilized society would let such valuable contributors be run into the ground by every new invention? Certainly not The Greatest City Known to Man.

Tea consumed and quills ready, he turned to finish getting ready for the market. That’s when he saw them. Eyes. Eyes in the rafters of his shop, perched amongst the curing quills-to-be. Four black beady eyes sat atop two fluorescent green winged bodies. The eyes were locked on his, staring at him intently. He made a move, starting towards the door, and both birds began flapping their wings savagely. Svetharsis couldn’t be certain, as he’d never owned nor even liked birds, but to him the motion seemed to drip with menace and the threat of impending violence. His orcish skin was tough, but how tough compared to the talons of an enraged bird descended from prehistoric beasts?

Afraid to break eye contact, he dropped the fresh quills onto the countertop and slowly began backing up towards the front of his shop. He bumped into the front door and then, in a burst of speed, turned around to open it and fling himself towards safety. The motion alarmed the birds, whose shrill shrieks of protest were so ear-piercingly loud that a spiderweb of cracks spread across the store’s front windows.

Svetharsis slammed the door shut behind himself and ran across the street to a neighbor’s house. He needed to call an extractor to rid himself of these brightly colored, demonic fowl.

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Oliver parked his trike next to the entrance of Dingbat Hall, amongst a tangle of other two- and three-wheeled vehicles, both alchemically powered and manually operated. He arrived with dry eyes today, having both remembered his riding goggles and driven at a more urbane speed. After all, there was no particular rush at the moment.

The cage mounted to the rear of his tricycle mocked him with its conspicuous emptiness. He had just come from a call about two parakeets terrorizing an Orcish merchant. Unfortunately, as he’d entered the small shop, the birds let out a bloodcurdling supersonic shriek. The windows of the shop exploded outwards, raining glass into the street. Partially cured quills shot through the air like javelins, threatening to impale Oliver and the terrified Orc shopkeeper. Then the birds had simply flown out the window, leaving Oliver with empty hands, mild tinnitus, and blood trickling lazily from his ears.

Stolen story; please report.

He walked slowly into the building, a feeling of fond nostalgia washing over him. Dingbat Hall was home to GnoU’s Arcanozoology department, where Oliver had studied. The building itself was large and block-like, entirely utilitarian. The sole nod to artistic sensibilities was the entryway, where the building was adorned with a carved stone relief depicting two immense dragons in flight. The sculpture was intricately detailed, with thousands of dragon scales painstakingly hammered in by hand, and the underlying sediment in the granite sparkled like an ocean of jewels in the midday sun. Still, Oliver had always thought the facade should depict bats rather than dragons, considering the building’s name. So far, no one had taken his side on the matter.

He walked through the empty halls, passing vacant lecture halls as he went, his footsteps echoing sharply off the stone floor. It felt strange in here, without the usual scholarly commotion as students rushed to their next class or discussed their weekend party plans. But it also felt more intimate that way, as if Oliver now had some deeper connection to the school.

Entering the lecture hall, Oliver found a motley crew arrayed before him— his guild mates, draped and lounging in the auditorium seats.

“Ah, Fizzlecrank. Welcome,” Professor Merriweather Whizzthrottle greeted him. The unofficial leader of their ragtag group, the professor had instructed and subsequently recruited each of them while they attended GnoU. He stood now at the head of the classroom, regal and erudite in a worn tweed jacket.

In front of the professor sat Simon Rattlecam, who dexterously spun a gold coin between the four remaining fingers of his left hand. Simon liked drawing attention to the deformity: he told everyone that the pinky finger had been bitten off by an enraged iguana. In truth, the iguana bite had barely broken the skin—the finger had really been lost to infection and a stubborn refusal to seek timely medical attention.

Maxwell Ripshank sat next to Simon, his legs crossed and feet propped on the chair in front of him. He had a long scar down the left side of his face from when he’d been chased by a basilisk, only to slip and cut himself on a piece of broken tile.

“About time,” Bertrand grumbled. Bertrand Spindleburr, second son of the famed Spindleburr family of inventors, leaned against a chalkboard such that the burnt left half of his face was swathed in shadow. His battle scars had come as the result of a bike accident, rather than a run-in with any creatures, and he’d vehemently sworn off alchemically-powered vehicles ever since.

“My apologies gentlemen. Thank you for coming on such short notice,” Oliver said.

“If this is about voting on a name again…” Bertrand shot Oliver a hard look. The two had been at odds for months as the group tried to decide on an official guild name. The Verminocitor’s Guild had been an initial front-runner that everyone seemed to agree upon—until one day when a harried looking aide from the GnoU legal department had come running into the Professor’s office with a copyright infringement lawsuit in her hand. After that The Rat Pack, Paw Patrol, and the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen had all met strangely similar fates. Now Oliver was pushing for the Guild of Exterminators and Extractors while Bertrand was firmly entrenched behind the name Animal Control.

“No, Bertrand.” Oliver tried to keep his patience in check. “This is rather something more important. A trend has emerged in my casework recently: mutant animals.”

“Mutants?” Greg asked curiously.

Oliver started; he hadn’t noticed Greg earlier, though of course he’d been invited too. Free of scars or deformities, he was instead freakishly tall. The one human of the group, who, despite towering over him and the other Gnomes, Oliver always seemed to forget about. That is, until a job required extracting something from a tree or other elevated position. That’s when Oliver gave Greg a call.

“Yes. In just the past few days I’ve encountered a bat with acidic urine, a bioluminescent crocodile, and parakeets with supersonic screeches. The Professor and I think something is going on, and wanted to see if any of you had encountered anything similar.” He looked towards Greg, craning his neck to make eye contact.

“Yes actually, now that you mention it. Maxwell called me in to assist with a cat stuck in a tree—”

“Just the man for the job!” Maxwell ribbed.

“Yes, well, that cat had two tails.”

“Two tails, huh?” Bertrand scoffed. “I got a call to retrieve a dead rat from a tavern. Bugger had two heads! Big as a horse, too.”

“It’s not a competition…” Oliver rolled his eyes at Bertrand’s stereotypical oneupmanship.

“Anyone else experience anything strange?” the professor asked. “Simon, Maxwell?”

“Now that you mention it, I had one earlier this week. Stray dog, pretty typical. But I swear, that dog smelled of elderberries. I honestly thought it was just my imagination, but could it have been caused by a mutation?” Simon asked.

The professor stroked his chin thoughtfully. “It very well could have been, Simon.”

“Well I think that settles it, Professor. There are enough data points to show a statistically significant trend.” Oliver looked around the room, his gazing touching upon each of his guild mates. “I think the only question now is, where are they coming from?…and why? And how do we stop it? Three questions, I suppose.”

“Perhaps we can perform a geospatial analysis,” Bertrand suggested. “Look for a point of origin.” A flicker of jealousy burned within Oliver: he should have thought of that.

“Capital idea,” the professor exclaimed. He went to the side of the lecture hall, lifted a chalkboard; followed by another behind the first; yet another behind that, which held a world atlas; before finally exposing a map of the city. The group huddled round, drawing small dots in chalk to indicate where their encounters took place.

A rough pattern emerged. The points didn’t coalesce as neatly as Oliver had hoped; indeed, they were spread out across multiple city blocks. But still, it was clear that these events were isolated to a relatively small quadrant near the border of the Arcane and Trade Quarters.

Oliver trailed his finger across the map, circling the affected area. “Shall we divide this quadrant into search grids, and each of us can patrol a designated area looking for anything out of the ordinary?”

Bertrand scoffed. “That’s still a large area to search. And we don’t know what to look for.”

“We’ll use our intuition,” Greg said with a bright smile.

“It’s settled then,” the Professor declared. “Happy hunting, gentlemen. And be safe.”